Jia Zhang Ke's remarkable, hauntingly beautiful, bleak and
provocative film is set in a Beijing theme park filled with
not-always-life-size replicas of famous landmarks such as the
Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal and the World Trade
Centre.

The park is a hallucinatory metaphor that in the end seems all
too real and a tangible expression of the film's title: it
encapsulates the way life is, feels and is evolving.

It's a film of slow, long takes that also boasts musical numbers
and spurts of animated reverie. Zhang Ke - who filmed in two real
theme parks made to look like one - explores what happens behind
the scenes. We go backstage, as it were, in this world of virtual
experiences and simulations where his cast of characters try to
establish lives for themselves, playing their parts in this
all-encompassing location of heightened displacement.